If old results do not add up then I can see two immediate reasons:
- The new results are wrong. That's why there is a difference.
- The old results were wrong. In this case all involved scientists should be very much ashamed to have helpfully participated in worshipping wrongness and fakery.
A third option could be partial wrongness, but I group this into the second case. In the modern era I no longer buy into honesty of scientists at all times. Case in point: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1197258 - bacterium growing via arsenic. Totally fabricated, hence lateron "retracted" (originally published in 2010).
- The new results are wrong. That's why there is a difference.
- The old results were wrong. In this case all involved scientists should be very much ashamed to have helpfully participated in worshipping wrongness and fakery.
A third option could be partial wrongness, but I group this into the second case. In the modern era I no longer buy into honesty of scientists at all times. Case in point: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1197258 - bacterium growing via arsenic. Totally fabricated, hence lateron "retracted" (originally published in 2010).